A new study from comScore shows that heavy users of social networking sites favor leisure-related retail sites. Heavy users of social networking sites are significantly more likely than average to visit leisure-oriented retail site categories, such as music, jewelry/luxury goods/accessories and consumer electronics than the average Internet user.
According to data from Internet Retailer, heavy social networkers accounted for 28.5% of visitors to music sites and 26.5% of visitors to jewelry/luxury goods/accessories sites. In addition, they represented nearly one-quarter of visitors to apparel sites (24.8%), tickets sites (24.5%), consumer electronics sites (23.9%), sports/outdoor sites (23.8%), computer software sites (23.7%), book sites (23.6%), movie sites (23.4%) and computer hardware sites (22.7%).
“There appears to be a natural synergy between the leisure categories and social networking sites,” says Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. “People typically enjoy sharing their experiences with these products, whether it’s to talk about their new iPhone or the pair of designer jeans they just bought. Social networking sites offer the venue for those conversations to occur.”
The study also found that fashion and apparel sites oriented to young adults attracted the highest percentage of visitors from the social networking segment. The top ten sites were TattooJohnny.com, where heavy social networkers accounted for 55.7% of site visitors; Alloy (51.7%); HollisterCo.com (50.3%); HotTopic.com (49.8%); PacSun.com (48.1%); Wetseal Inc. (45.9%); Forever 21 Inc. (43.5%); Aeropostale.com (43.4%); Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (43.4%); and AE.com (42.8%).
“Apparel retailers—especially those geared towards younger consumers—can benefit by considering the use of social networking sites as a marketing channel,” Fulgoni says.
comScore defined a heavy user as the top 20% of visitors to social networking sites based on time spent on the sites.
This data indicates that downstream traffic from social networking sites is still primarily consumer driven. Is that because retailers have done a better job of targeting social media users than businesses have, or is there another reason why B2B still lags behind in social networking?
{ 5 trackbacks }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d be interested to see which social media sites this survey used as its sample; I’d imagine the sites change quite substantially for more travel related social networks (WAYN) for example.
I’m assuming they used large, broad audience, social networks like Myspace or Facebook. Rather than niche social sites like WAYN, Bakespace, or Outdoorzy.
Its an interesting conclusion though. Seems this would turn the light on for those in the leisure industry to the power of social media.